Titanic tale comes to television

Downton Abbey writer retells the saga of the ‘unsinkable’ ocean liner in a four-part miniseries

‘It all went wrong’; TV miniseries, Titanic, the latest dramatization of the 1912 disaster.

The story of the Titanic is filled with enough drama, action, and mayhem to fill a four-part miniseries, without having to look for deeper meaning and glints of social commentary.

But it’s almost as if the producers of Titanic, a sprawling, four-part Hungarian-Canadian-British miniseries that airs Wednesday, were trying to make a decidedly egalitarian point when listing the gigantic cast in alphabetical order, as opposed to highlighting its lead actors.

Because, while the tragic nautical disaster of 1912 is ostensibly the focus of the miniseries, it could be argued that Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes was just as fascinated with the strict class system that governed the makeshift society on RMS Titanic’s infamous maiden voyage and, in many ways, determined who would live and die when it began to sink.

British actor Linus Roache, one of the more marquee-friendly stars in Titanic, who, nevertheless, ranks 19th in the opening credits, laughs when the theory is run by him, suggesting he doesn’t completely buy it. But he does acknowledge that the prickly British class system that had survived into the early 20th century is a large part of Titanic’s story.

“It’s hard for us to appreciate that this was normal,” he says. “That was very hard for us to act, and why I think it’s so challenging to play aristocrats. It’s hard to even think about what it’s like to feel that entitled. It’s not even arrogance, it’s just what you were born with. We can’t relate to that in our post-modern culture. But Julian writes to it beautifully, I think, and creates a lot of great drama out of it. It’s part of the strength of the piece.”

Despite a background in British theatre, Roache had never played an aristocrat before. He stars as the fictional Earl of Manton, an unusually approachable high-society type who nevertheless has to deal with a wife (Geraldine Somerville) who doesn’t like to mingle with the lower classes, and a headstrong suffragette daughter (Perdita Weeks) who thinks she does. The family is just three of the more than 80 characters who inhabit Titanic. There’s the Irish lawyer (Toby Jones) and his bitter wife (Maria Doyle Kennedy), who are relegated to second-class quarters. There’s an ambitious engineer (Peter McDonald) who flees Belfast with his large family but is forced to stay in steerage. There are servants, waiters, stewards, crew and rich Americans, all making for a simmering mix of class and culture as the ship floats toward its doom. But the on-screen tension never found its way to the set, Roache insists. Even when the shooting schedule coincided with a scorching heat wave in Hungary last summer, the cast were in good spirits, he says.

Titanic was filmed in Budapest with the help of meticulously crafted sets and a massive water tank. It’s a followup to Downton Abbey for Fellowes, who won an Oscar in 2002 for adapting the screenplay for Robert Altman’s Gosford Park. His involvement was what initially attracted Roache to the role. While the actor has an impressive resume in British theatre and film, including the lead role in Antonia Bird’s controversial 1994 drama, Priest, he’s perhaps best known in these parts as feisty assistant district attorney Michael Cutter on the Law & Order franchise, and young Bruce Wayne’s murdered father in Batman Begins.

“I love ensemble work,” Roache says. “I come from a theatre background, and I consider all theatre to be ensemble, even if you’re playing the lead. It was great to go back and be part of a British cast, and some Canadians in there. as well, and all be part of this big ensemble. Some days, we had long days on set together, where you might have one line or even not speak, because you’re all part of a big sequence. So there was a lot of time hanging out together and (there was)a very good-natured spirit.”

The miniseries is just part of a frenzy of renewed interest in the world’s most famous maritime disaster during its centennial anniversary. James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster will soon be re-released to theatres in 3-D. There are numerous books and even a competing TV dramatic series. The 12-part Titanic: Blood and Steel, starring Neve Campbell and Chris Noth, is set to sail in April.

“I think people are always interested in stories of human hubris: This will never happen to us and it does,” says Roache. “I think it was also at a particular period of time that was very romantic, just before the First World War. Everybody felt as if they were being represented on that ship: first-class through to steerage. It was the height of engineering. Nothing could go wrong, and it all went wrong.”

But while the Titanic may have been a floating symbol of man’s inequality and arrogance, the fascination runs even deeper, Roache theorizes. The idea that the ship seemed “ill-fated” from the start intrigues us, he says, as does the question of what we may have done in the same boat. Would we have been cowards or a heroes?

“So many little things added up for that disaster to happen,” he says. “Obviously, it hit an iceberg. But if it only ripped into four compartments instead of five, it wouldn’t have gone down. If they’d got the ice warnings earlier, or if someone had responded to the ice warnings, it would have been a different story. . . . There was a ship nearby that didn’t respond to flares. How did so many little things add up to cost so much human life?”

Over four hour-long episodes, Titanic delves into the lives of its characters — some based on real people, some not — and treats the lead-up to the disaster from different points of view.

The final episode will reveal which of the characters survive.

“Ultimately, it’s a story of life and death and human standards and values and who we are in times of crisis,” Roache says. “That’s what makes good drama.”

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